Fix or remove bozo function before it kills bbPress

The bozo function seems to be broken. Just do a search of this forum for bozo and you will see tons of questions from people who have just installed bbPress, they post but the posts don’t show, or they are the key master and are marked a bozo. If someone has responded to a thread with the word ‘bozo’ these searches will work on this forum:

I respectfully request a new release with this bozo functionality fixed and functional (waiting for 1.0 is not acceptable IMHO) or a new release with the functionality removed. I have been running a bbPress forum for 6 months or so and I have never had a need to mark someone a bozo, but I have spent countless hours either fixing bozo problems on my own forum or responding to requests on this forum from people who can’t see their own posts, etc. How many other people have used it for what it’s for vs. how many people have been affected by it not working correctly?

I’m not worried about fixing it for me. I’m worried about fixing it for every new person who comes along and installs it and has a problem immediately. If the above works, that should be the default and that should be released. Anyone who downloads the latest.tar.gz should not have to edit out anything to fix the bozo problem. The default doesn’t work, so it should be changed until it’s fixed. No patches: a new release.

I think in the vast majority of cases it does work. Anyway, I agree it seems like releasing .82 just with the bozo thing fixed (making the changes the plugin makes now) would’ve been the smart thing to do – but I don’t know what’s going on in their offices.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable for pre-1.0 software to have outstanding problems like this. Personally I have had to mark users as bozos. The only thing lacking here is documentation, which is often the case with free software.

If you look at it, the bozo.php file hasn’t had any real “renovations” for quite some time. It is something that has to be addressed and I completely agree. Between the integration issues, akismet and bozo concerns, people might be a little put off.

What I don’t understand is how some people are getting real problems and others are not. I haven’t had any real problems, but I don’t run a large site. Has any of the big ones had any real problems?

Funny, I just ran into this problem again within the past couple of days. Totally out of the blue, without any changes to the forum, a handful of my members posts are being marked as spam, and half of those users are marked as bozo. Because I have nothing to go on, I can’t offer up any useful info for a solution at this point.

It’s not a huge problem since I can just check the spam every couple of days and send the posts to the forum. The last bozo solution worked so well that I don’t even check it anymore, but someone emailed me today to alert me and I found a stack of posts from the last 2-4 days marked as spam.